P.F. Sloan

I’ve been reading What’s Exactly the Matter with Me?: Memoirs of a Life in Music, by P.F. Sloan and S.E. Feinberg. It’s about the life, times and music of P.F. Sloan. Sloan wrote, produced, or co-wrote with Steve Barri, a large number of hit songs in the 60s and later. They include Eve of Destruction, and A Must to Avoid (performed by Herman’s Hermits). He lived for a while in Laurel Canyon, and thus knew and worked with a lot of the people I wrote about in this post.

P.F. Sloan is a bit of a strange character, and What’s Exactly the Matter with Me? is a rather strange read – for example, at one point Sloan writes about meeting James Dean two years after his death. But his take on the music industry and why and how groups wrote and released music in the 60s is riveting.

In the above video you can get a feel for the character of P.F. Sloan.